Calder Cup playoffs finally return to the Aud

Saturday

Apr 25, 2015 at 7:45 PM

Thursday, April 22, 1993. That was the last Calder Cup playoff game in Utica. Thousands of hockey fans have been waiting for another ever since. They'll get it Wednesday, when the Chicago Wolves visit the Aud for Game 3 of their first round series.

John Pitarresi @OD_Pitarresi

The Utica Devils and Rochester Americans were battling in overtime in the first-round American Hockey League playoff game at the Utica Memorial Auditorium.

It was 3-3 with nearly seven minutes gone by.

Then, bang, Jason Young scored for Rochester, and it was all over.

“It was like you could hear a pin drop,” Jim Mancuso said. “The guys left the ice immediately.”

It was Thursday, April 22, 1993. Bill Clinton was in his first year as president of the United States, Mario Cuomo was nearing the end of his final term as governor of New York, and the Montreal Canadiens were six weeks away from winning their 24th – and to this point, last – Stanley Cup.

That was the last Calder Cup playoff game in Utica. Mancuso and thousands of other Mohawk Valley hockey fans have been waiting for another ever since. They’ll get it Wednesday, when the Chicago Wolves visit the Aud for Game 3 of their first round series.

“I can’t wait,” said Mancuso, who has written several books on the area’s hockey legacy. “I think it is incredible. Not only do we have the conference and division titles, we’re playing for one of the greatest championship trophies in the second best league in the world.”

There have been other professional playoff games at the Aud since the Devils left town at the end of that 1992-93 season – the Mohawk Valley Prowlers made it to the second round of the United Hockey League playoffs in 2000 and played three games at home – but the high quality of play in the AHL, the recent refurbishment of the building, and the on-ice success the Comets have had in their first two seasons has led to an especially high level of anticipation for this postseason.

“I am so excited I can’t tell you,” said Dianne Nassar of Marcy, who has been a fan since she was a little girl, going back to the days of the Clinton Comets. “I listened to the game Saturday (a 3-2 victory over the Adirondack Flames in Glens Falls that clinched the Western Conference championship), and I saw fans were getting together to meet the bus. I told my daughter, ‘Let’s go.’ It was exciting. To see the faces of those guys when they got off the bus, how appreciative they were. And they were taking pictures and videos! ... It’s unbelievable to think we are in the AHL playoffs.”

That last AHL postseason game was so long ago – it will be 8,042 days from game to game – some fans can’t recall if they were there or not.

“I don’t really remember,” said Joel Sainsbury of New Hartford, another fan who has seen hundreds of games at the Aud and who will be there Wednesday without question. “I’m excited. I can’t wait. I wish they started at home.”

Sainsbury said the current team and the AHL itself are quite different animals than those of two decades ago. The players are bigger, faster and stronger in general, and there are more Europeans, which makes for sharper competition for spots in the AHL and in the National Hockey League.

“It’s a different type of team, and entirely different league,” he said. “The speed factor ... it’s great. It’s the second-best league in the world.”

The Aud is one of the smallest buildings in the AHL – 3,835 seats for hockey – but that and a fan base that has been schooled in the game for pretty much a century fuels its reputation for being loud and chaotic and a tough place to play. The Comets were 25-10-3-0 at home this season.

“I think it is going to be totally crazy, more so than normal,” said Mike Zalewski – the veteran fan from Utica, not the rookie Comets forward from New Hartford. “I think everybody is behind this team. They deserve the support they are getting. Even if it doesn’t go our way (in Chicago), the crowd will be there win or lose. And I think they are going further than the first round.”

That last playoff game in the UHL came after the Prowlers had taken an opening round playoff series from the Missouri River Otters. Serge Roberge, one of the most popular players in Mohawk Valley hockey history because of his ability to use his fists but only an infrequent offensive presence, scored the winning goal. The Prowlers then fell behind the Quad City Mallards two games to one in the second round before the teams met April 18, 2000 at the Aud. The Mallards won 5-4, wiping out a 3-1 Prowlers lead, with the building rocking and rolling the whole time. Tim Harris, Ben White, John Vecchiarelli and New Hartford’s Mark Kotary scored the Utica goals. That turned out to be the very last pro playoff game at the Aud, with Quad City closing out the series two days later in Moline, Illinois.

There were a great many playoff games earlier, of course, especially when local teams made long runs to championships. Billy Horton’s Mohawk Valley Stars won the Atlantic Coast Hockey League title in 1982 – the deciding game was played at the Clinton Arena – and the Clinton Comets won Eastern Hockey League Walker Cup championships in 1959, 1964, 1968, 1969 and 1970.